ok, teemers, your chance to redeem my faith in humanity, i posted this question on AFU and got one non-serious reply, all i wanna know is if this piece of “fact” which has been going 'round useless fact and dumb law lists forever (but, i don’t place much faith in them since i found out donald was NOT banned in Finland coz he wears no pants). Is it true that duelling is legal in paraguay if both parties are registered blood donors? Can someone find out for me please, i’m dying to know.
Okay, Google gave me 229 hits just now for “duelling Paraguay”, repeating this same factoid 229 times. It’s one of those “weird laws” things, that nobody ever knows where it came from.
Why don’t you be the one to sort through them? Let us know what you find… 
You might also want to take a gander at this. Subject lines like “Hey, I’ve got a question!” and “Help me out here” which do nothing to address the actual subject of the post are far more likely to be ignored by users who are picky about which of the hundreds of active threads that they choose to read.
If you mentioned Paraguay and dueling in your subject line, you’re much more likely to catch the attention of the many duelists or Paraguayans on this Board. Unfortunately for you, I am only versed in Bolivian laws relating to jousting, so I’m no help.
This concludes our test of the Nag-The-Newbie Broadcast System.
Some of us might consider pointing a newbie straight to The Pit bad form. Perhaps that’s because activity that is par for the course there is nearly bannable elsewhere on the SDMB. So at least warn the tender greenie before you send him marching down to the depths of the SDMB’s Pit. 
I was going to suggest you call the local embassy or consulate of Paraguay, but this site doesn’t indicate where one would be in Oz (or even in NZ). You might try contacting an embassy/consulate in the U.S. or U.K. on the grounds that they would have someone who spoke English. If your Spanish is pretty good, you could try the Paraguay Home Page.
Is it permitted to ride a Shire in the joust? Or are the size limits set at no horse larger than a Clydesdale? Are there any rules regarding the new Halflingers that have become popular in the last 12 years, carrying a bit less weight but significantly more speed?
Dumblaws.com has a lot of those that are quite funny. I was looking through them a couple of weeks ago and was laughing outloud.
dumblaws.com is, erm, questionable. I put about as much faith into it as those “You can’t put an elephant in a bathtub” books from my ladful youth.
Maybe half are true- many are exaggerations or half-truths.
jb
Tomndebb,
Tragically, overregulation in Bolivia has made a mockery of the once-noble joust. A persistent trend of larger and larger steeds-- Plafreys led to Shires led to Belgians led to Percherons, until 1995, when some local wag rode a hippopotamus to the rail.
The city fathers of La Paz were not pleased, and immediately began work on a complex regulatory scheme which was finally implemented after raucous public hearings in 1997-98. Rather than place sensible limits on the permitted horse breeds, as had the National Jousting Federations of Belize, Chile, and Ecuador, the new Bolivian scheme promulgated complex rules that sought to permit wide variety in horses, but conditioned the use of effective lances in inverse proportion to the size of your mount.
Consequently, you can enter the 2001 Hugo Banzer Suarez Classic (sponsored by Banco De Bolivia) on a Shetland Pony (or large Doberman Pinscher) while weilding a 19 foot lance tipped with razors and barbed wire, or storm in on a Brahma Bull armed with a drinking straw. Spectator attendance has doubled, but the purists turn up their noses as the newly christened “Xtreme Jousting League.”
Blood donation is strictly optional, as are codpieces.
Codpieces for the jousters, or the horses?
And, um, how did the guy with the hippo do?
Belgians are among the smaller draft breeds, while Shires are about as big as they come without going to a really rare breed or an elephant.